One man's journey to live out a childhood dream of attending Phillies Phantasy Camp… and to honor the memory of his beloved father.

“When You Are Ten…”

“…you know more about your team than you ever will know again.” – Dan Shaughnessy

This past week has seen me really take a deep look back to those salad days of my Phillies Phandom. My day of baseball at the Phillies’ home opener was filled with wonderful recollections of those trips to Veterans Stadium to see my favorite team play my favorite sport. Later in the week, the third anniversary of the passing of Harry Kalas came and went, once again making me recall the magic of my youth and my passion for the Phillies.

To drive the point home, a few pieces of personal memorabilia have come in to my possession.

“Back in 1989, the Phillies flat-out stunk. Stunk so bad I don’t even want to remember. I was 19, as was my buddy Jim, and we both thought we were going to take the sportswriting nation by storm. We’d listen and agonize over the Nonphightin’ Phils that summer. At some point, we thought ‘Hey, they should let us do an inning or two. Break up the monontany.’ So we drafted a letter to Harry and Ritchie and sent it off, never thinking twice. Little did we expect to receive a personalized response from The Voice himself. Complete with edit marks (this was WAY before email). An actual letter, polite and classy, back to a couple of dumb college freshman. That’s what endures – Harry’s class.”

This is why we will always love HK.

About a month ago, my friend Tom, who I attended the home opener with, sent to me all the newspapers he collected on April 18, 1987, the day Michael Jack Schmidt cemented his place in the Hall of Fame when he parked a Don Robinson pitch over the left field wall in Pittsburgh for his 500th career home run.

The sight of the Philadelphia Inquirer’s special section about Schmidt’s life in baseball created a wave of emotion and nostalgia. As an 11-year old, I poured over that inset, digesting all the pictures, stories, and statistics about my baseball hero. I must have looked at it at least 10,000 times. And then noticing that this year marks the 25th anniversary of that blast, another realization of how the years are flying hit me.

But then Tom took it the next level. At the opener, we talked about our first Phillies games. The sights. The smells.

To this day, this is all I remember: It was a Sunday game. I went with my first Little League team. My dad, unfortunately, was not with me. We sat somewhere between the 500 and 700 level, on the first base side. Larry Christenson pitched. That’s it.

The very next day, he sent me another email. We discovered that we actually both attended Game 4 of the 1993 World Series, and may have sat very close to each other in the high-altitude reaches of the 700 level in right field. In his search for his stub, he stumbled upon another ticket from 1982.

The same game. My first game. 30 years ago.

He was not in attendance. He had traded with another person to get this random game ticket. He popped it in the mail the very next day.

I will forever be in debt.

All of these artifacts could pique the interest of collectors and Phillies Phans. I don’t know what these yellowing pieces of paper hold in terms of dollars and cents.

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About

Originally hailing from Wilmington, DE, Bryan has been a lifelong fan of the Philadelphia Phillies ever since that fateful day in 1982 when his dad bought him his very first pack of baseball cards. Inside? An All-Star card for Mike Schmidt.

Since 2001, Bryan has been living in New York City, exploring all his varied interests... photography, writing and performing music, and blogging about his Phillies.

On the morning before Game 6 of the 2009 World Series, Bryan's father passed away. This tragic event inspired Bryan to live out one of his childhood dreams of attending Phillies Phantasy Camp. Through his writing and photography, Bryan is now chronicling this experience, and at the same time, honoring the man who brought the wonderful game of baseball and most importantly, the Phillies, into his life.

Websites:Bryan Sargent PhotographyYou can contact him at bryansargent (at) gmail (dot) com or follow him on Twitter @BTSargent.

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